If you don’t have any other conditioning, then you can try out this approach because of its efficiency, economy and built-in recovery time. This was designed by myself and my two kettlebell coaches: Eric Liford, publisher of the American Kettlebell Club and Valery Fedorenko, the “Michael Jordan” of kettlebell lifting – world champion, record holder and national coach. The progression is sequential: meaning that as soon as you lock down one score, you can move to the next one on your next training day, and keep progressing until you can’t complete the step. Stay with the incomplete step until you can complete it (takes about 2-3X to make a progression when you hit one, it seemed like to me and my guys, but I didn’t isolate out any of our recovery methods.)

Eric suggested that it was possible to train every day, but I think that suggestion came from the orientation of being a professional kettlebell lifter, rather than from being a fighter for which he suggested that we need to tailor it to meet our ability to recovery for rolling. S&C being supplemental only for fighters. So, here’s the progression:

* Start at one arm Long Cycle non-stop for 3 minutes with hand switches every 5 reps. Find your base RPM (usually around 8 reps when just beginning this sort of training.) Pace is important for progression so once you find your RPM stick with it.
* When you can keep the same RPM for 3 minutes. Add one minute.
* Here’s where things pick up for awhile and you adapt to the technique. It looks like you develop fast, but I believe it’s just your technique catching up to your conditioning as a fighter.
* Keep adding one minute each session as long as you can keep the same RPM until you can get to 10 minutes.
* At 10 minutes, drop down to 6 minutes, and add one RPM. Repeat the above: add one minute per session until you get to 10 minutes.
* At 10 minutes, drop down to 6 minutes and add another RPM. Repeat the above until you’re at 12RPMs for 10 minutes.
* Then, drop down to 6 minutes and 8RPMs (or whatever your base pace was), then perform one hand switch every 10 reps rather than one switch every 5 reps. Work back up to 12RPMs for 10 minutes.
* Here’s where Eric suggested we move up in total duration, so we kept adding one minute per session as long as we could complete 12RPMs. And we worked up to 20 minutes.
* Then, we dropped back down to 6 minutes and only performed one hand switch for 5 minutes, and then 5 minutes on the other hand - finding our base RPM.
* We kept adding one RPM per session until we were up to 10RPMs for 20 minutes.
* Now, that wasn’t constant. We did a lot of jumping around. And that was back when we were adding the 32kgs into the mix for over-compensation/over-loading. But it worked me up to 100 reps in 10 minutes of 1-arm Long Cycle with the 32kgs and one hand switch. However, the 32kgs beat us up too much and we were getting slow and hurt, so we dropped down to the 24kgs again, and within two weeks we were back on velocity with no aches and pains.

Maybe it sounds complicated, but it’s really pretty simple, and there’s a lot of flexibility to it. Coach Fedorenko told me that there’s no rule to this, only tinkering with how we’re feeling that day… but to train as much as possible for only 10-20 minutes. Freaks like Marty Farrell did that several times a day, most days of the week. That would kill us because of how much we grapple, but I respect it, for sho.

Hope it helps. It did wonders for our guys.

Scott Sonnon , Distinguished Master of Sports

Scott Sonnon LIVE Blog:Ultimate Fighter Conditioning for the Cage

RMAX International, Chief Operating Officer

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What we think, or what we know, or what we believe, is in the end, of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do. -John Ruskin